How to Eat a Water Chestnut

I may have forgotten how to write. 

No question, I have forgotten how to write. 

And yet, this page is still here. 

I thought of you today, dear blog, while talking to myself and mentally chronicling the process of eating a water chestnut for an imaginary audience. A singhara. Terrible in puri form, but so yummy straight out of the water. 

A fruit that resembles a minotaur so closely, it could be its closest genome equivalent. (And this moment is when, ladies and gentlemen, my geneticist progenitors disowned me). 

First, cut off the two horns. Then the back of the head, and slowly peel the top off like a helmet. Pop the white rounded triangle in your mouth. Think about the joy of being alive. 

Somehow, the green ones have been much sweeter than the purples. Who'd have thought. Yet another mystery of the universe. 

Irreversible Pauses

I went to a wake last night for a co-worker who died at an unacceptably young age.

He was an outstanding actor and singer as well. The video of one of his songs, that he sang at somebody's retirement party was played for the audience - a funny rendition of Don McLean's 'American Pie'. As the song completed, someone said 'you can stop it now' to the person sitting closest to the screen. She hit the pause button, and I saw his frame leaning on his guitar freeze on screen.

And I knew that the video wasn't done yet - that there had to be more. And yet, isn't that what death at an early age is like? You know there's more to a life, but the power goes out, the tape gets stuck, and there's nothing you can do. And you keep wondering how the video would've ended.